Theory Quotes - Page 20

• Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it says is that a large sum of elements may have properties not found in a smaller sample of them.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Science, Elements, May

  Rudolf Arnheim (1974). “Entropy and Art: An Essay on Disorder and Order”, p.21, Univ of California Press

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• Entropy theory, on the other hand, is not concerned with the probability of succession in a series of items but with the overall distribution of kinds of items in a given arrangement.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Science, Hands, Probability Theory

  Rudolf Arnheim (1974). “Entropy and Art: An Essay on Disorder and Order”, p.19, Univ of California Press

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• Facts are of not much use, considered as facts. They bewilder by their number and their apparent incoherency. Let them be digested into theory, however, and brought into mutual harmony, and it is another matter.

  Oliver Heaviside

  Science, Numbers, Use

  Electromagnetic Theory Chapter I, Introduction (p. 12)

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• How strange it would be if the final theory were to be discovered in our lifetimes! The discovery of the final laws of nature will mark a discontinuity in human intellectual history, the sharpest that has occurred since the beginning of modern science in the seventeenth century. Can we now imagine what that would be like?

  Steven Weinberg

  Science, Discovery, Law

  Steven Weinberg (1992). “Dreams of a Final Theory”, Pantheon

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• How then did we come to the "standard model"? And how has it supplanted other theories, like the steady state model? It is a tribute to the essential objectivity of modern astrophysics that this consensus has been brought about, not by shifts in philosophical preference or by the influence of astrophysical mandarins, but by the pressure of empirical data.

  Steven Weinberg

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Science

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• Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory of the virtuous. ... The aim of medicine is surely not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard them from the consequences of their vices.

  H. L. Mencken

  Science, Men, Hygiene

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.269, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I conceived and developed a new geometry of nature and implemented its use in a number of diverse fields. It describes many of the irregular and fragmented patterns around us, and leads to full-fledged theories, by identifying a family of shapes I call fractals.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Science, Numbers, Nomenclature

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• I have been scientifically studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so-called,) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result profoundly humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.

  Mark Twain

  Science, Animal, Men

  Mark Twain (1973). “What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings”, p.81, Univ of California Press

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• I learnt to distrust all physical concepts as the basis for a theory. Instead one should put one's trust in a mathematical scheme, even if the scheme does not appear at first sight to be connected with physics. One should concentrate on getting interesting mathematics.

  Paul Dirac

  Science, Sight, Interesting

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• I therefore took this opportunity and also began to consider the possibility that the Earth moved. Although it seemed an absurd opinion, nevertheless, because I knew that others before me had been granted the liberty of imagining whatever circles they wished to represent the phenomena of the stars, I thought that I likewise would readily be allowed to test whether, by assuming some motion of the Earth's, more dependable representations than theirs could be found for the revolutions of the heavenly spheres.

  Nicolaus Copernicus

  Stars, Science, Opportunity

  Nicolaus Copernicus (1976). “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres”, David & Charles Publishers

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• I will simply express my strong belief, that that point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations, until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of dally life.

  Michael Faraday

  Strong, Philosophy, Teaching

  Michael Faraday (1859). “Experimental researches in Chemistry and Physics ... Reprinted from the Philosophical Transactions of 1821-1857; the Journal of the Royal Institution ... and other publications”, p.477

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• If he [Thomas Edison] had a needle to find in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. ... [J]ust a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.

  Nikola Tesla

  Science, Ust, Littles

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• If history is any guide at all, it seems to me to suggest that there is a final theory. In this century we have seen a convergence of the arrows of explanation, like the convergence of meridians toward the North Pole.

  Steven Weinberg

  Science, Arrows, History

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• If there is something very slightly wrong in our definition of the theories, then the full mathematical rigor may convert these errors into ridiculous conclusions.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Errors, May

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• If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
  On being reproached that his formula of gravitation was longer and more cumbersome than Newton's.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Tailors, Newton

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• In general, a fact is worth more than theories in the long run. The theory stimulates, but the fact builds. The former in due time is replaced by one better but the fact remains and becomes fertile.

  Theobald Smith

  Running, Science, Long

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• In point of fact, no conclusive disproof of a theory can ever be produced; for it is always possible to say that the experimental results are not reliable or that the discrepancies which are asserted to exist between the experimental results and the theory are only apparent and that they will disappear with the advance of our understanding. If you insist on strict proof (or strict disproof) in the empirical sciences, you will never benefit from experience, and never learn from it how wrong you are.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Understanding, Benefits

  "The Logic of Scientific Discovery".

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• It appears that anything you say about the way that theory and experiment may interact is likely to be correct, and anything you say about the way that theory and experiment must interact is likely to be wrong.

  Steven Weinberg

  Science, May, Way

  Steven Weinberg (1992). “Dreams of a Final Theory”, Pantheon

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• It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory-if we look for confirmations. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions... A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or refute it.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Thinking, People

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• It is going to be necessary that everything that happens in a finite volume of space and time would have to be analyzable with a finite number of logical operations. The present theory of physics is not that way, apparently. It allows space to go down into infinitesimal distances, wavelengths to get infinitely great, terms to be summed in infinite order, and so forth; and therefore, if this proposition [that physics is computer-simulatable] is right, physical law is wrong.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Distance, Science, Finite Number

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• It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment... It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress. If there is not complete agreement between the results of one's work and experiment, one should not allow oneself to be too discouraged, because the discrepancy may well be due to minor features that are not properly taken into account and that will get cleared up with further developments of the theory.

  Paul Dirac

  Taken, Science, Views

  "The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature". Article republished from May 1963 issue of Scientific American, blogs.scientificamerican.com. June 25, 2010.

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• It is not that we propose a theory and Nature may shout NO; rather, we propose a maze of theories, and Nature may shout INCONSISTENT.

  Imre Lakatos

  Nature, Science, Mazes

  Imre Lakatos, John Worrall, Gregory Currie (1980). “The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers”, p.45, Cambridge University Press

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• Maxwell's theory is Maxwell's system of equations.

  Heinrich Hertz

  Science, Maxwell, Equations

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• Mr Hooke sent, in his next letter [to Sir Isaac Newton] the whole of his Hypothesis, scil that the gravitation was reciprocall to the square of the distance: ... This is the greatest Discovery in Nature that ever was since the World's Creation. It was never so much as hinted by any man before. I wish he had writt plainer, and afforded a little more paper.

  John Aubrey

  Distance, Science, Men

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• No experimental result can ever kill a theory: any theory can be saved from counterinstances either by some auxiliary hypothesis or by a suitable reinterpretation of its terms.

  Imre Lakatos

  Science, Results, Hypothesis

  Imre Lakatos, John Worrall, Gregory Currie (1980). “The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers”, p.32, Cambridge University Press

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